The significance of the laurel and its sources in the classics of the Middle Ages and the Golden Age

As part of the classical heritage, fully valid through the Middle Ages and the Golden Age, the laurel was still during this time the symbol of power, the military triumph, the gift of prophecy and, above all, the symbol of poetry as well as the sign of glory which can be achieved through the arts. It was also associated with it the belief, preserved to the present day and very much alive in our classical literature, that laurel cannot be struck by lightning. On the other hand its branches were both the symbol and trophy of heroic poetry, whereas myrtle was suitable for the erotic and the ivy for the minor poetry, mainly the pastoral or bucolic, but in spite of this, laurel is often used as seasoning and with its symbolic meaning in ecologues and pastoral books. Finally the laurel is associated with love: Petrarch together with his followers, used to refer to his beloved Laura, by means of the phonic association, and sometimes semantic as well, between Laura and laurel: and as for the Ovidian legend that tells Apollo's love for the nymph Daphne, who was turned into a laurel, its different versions, the serious as well as the burlesque ones, were plentiful during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.